The Deipnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned of Athenaeus Part 28

28. However, Phaenias the Eresian compels us to entertain the idea that, perhaps, the name may be meant for _cedron_, as from the cedar-tree.

For, in the fifth book of his treatise on Plants, he says that the cedar has thorns around its leaves; and that the same is the case with the citron is visible to everybody. But that the citron when eaten before any kind of food, whether dry or moist, is an antidote to all injurious effects, I am quite certain, having had that fact fully proved to me by my fellow-citizen, who was entrusted with the government of Egypt. He had condemned some men to be given to wild beasts, as having been convicted of being malefactors, and such men he said were only fit to be given to beasts. And as they were going into the theatre appropriated to the punishment of robbers, a woman who was selling fruit by the wayside gave them out of pity some of the citron which she herself was eating, and they took it and ate it, and after a little while, being exposed to some enormous and savage beasts, and bitten by asps, they suffered no injury. At which the governor was mightily astonished. And at last, examining the soldier who had charge of them, whether they had eaten or drunk anything, when he learnt of him that some citron had been given to them without any evil design; on the next day he ordered some citron to be given to some of them again, and others to have none given to them.

And those who eat the citron, though they were bitten, received no injury, but the others died immediately on being bitten. And this result being proved by repeated experiments, it was found that citron was an antidote to all sorts of pernicious poison. But if any one boils a whole citron with its seed in Attic honey, it is dissolved in the honey, and he who takes two or three mouthfuls of it early in the morning will never experience any evil effects from poison.

29. Now if any one disbelieves this, let him learn from Theopompus the Chian, a man of the strictest truth and who expended a great deal of money on the most accurate investigation of matters to be spoken of in his History. For he says, in the thirty-eighth book of his History, while giving an account of Clearchus, the tyrant of the Heracleans who were in Pontus, that he seized violently upon a number of people and gave a great many of them hemlock to drink.--"And as," says he, "they all knew that he was in the habit of compelling them to pledge him in this liquor, they never left their homes without first eating rue: for people who have eaten this beforehand take no harm from drinking aconite,--a poison which, they say, has its name from growing in a place called Aconae, which is not far from Heraclea." When Democritus had said this they all marvelled at the efficacy of citron, and most of them ate it, as if they had had nothing to eat or drink before. But Pamphilus, in his Dialects, says that the Romans call it not ??t????, but ??t???.

30. And after the viands which have been mentioned there were then brought unto us separately some large dishes of oysters, and other sh.e.l.l-fish, nearly all of which have been thought by Epicharmus worthy of being celebrated in his play of the Marriage of Hebe, in these words:--

Come, now, bring all kinds of sh.e.l.l-fish; Lepades, aspedi, crabyzi, strabeli, cecibali, Tethunachia, balani, porphyrae, and oysters with closed sh.e.l.ls, Which are very difficult to open, but very easy to eat; And mussels, and anaritae, and ceryces, and sciphydria, Which are very sweet to eat, but very p.r.i.c.kly to touch; And also the oblong solens. And bring too the black c.o.c.kle, which keeps the c.o.c.kle-hunter on the stretch.

Then too there are other c.o.c.kles, and sand-eels, And periwinkles, unproductive fish, Which men ent.i.tle banishers of men, But which we G.o.ds call white and beautiful.

31. And in the Muses it is written--

There is the c.o.c.kle, which we call the tellis; Believe me, that is most delicious meat.

Perhaps he means that fish which is called the _tellina_, and which the Romans call the _mitlus_,--a fish which Aristophanes the grammarian names in his treatise on the Broken Scytale, and says that the lepas is a fish like that which is called the tellina. But Callias of Mitylene, in his discussion of the Limpet in Alcaeus, says that there is an ode in Alcaeus of which the beginning is--

O child of the rock, and of the h.o.a.ry sea;

and at the end of it there is the line--

Of all limpets the sea-limpet most relaxes the mind.

But Aristophanes writes the line with the word _tortoise_ instead of _limpet_. And he says that Dicaearchus made a great blunder when he interpreted the line of limpets; and that the children when they get them in their mouths sing and play with them, just as idle boys among us do with the fish which we call tellina. And so, too, Sopater, the compiler of Comicalities, says in his drama which is ent.i.tled the Eubulotheombrotus:--

But stop, for suddenly a certain sound Of the melodious tellina strikes my ears.

And in another place Epicharmus, in his Pyrrha and Prometheus, says--

Just look now at this tellina, and behold This periwinkle and this splendid limpet.

And in Sophron c.o.c.kles are called _melaenides_.

For now melaenides will come to us, Sent from a narrow harbour.

And in the play which is called "The Clown and the Fisherman," they are called the _cherambe_. And Archilochus also mentions the cherambe: and Ibycus mentions the periwinkle. And the periwinkle is called both ??a??t?? and ????ta?. And the sh.e.l.l being something like that of a c.o.c.kle, it sticks to the rocks, just as limpets do. But Herondas, in his Coadjutrixes, says--

Sticking to the rocks as a periwinkle.

And aeschylus, in his Persae, says--

Who has plunder'd the islands producing the periwinkle?

And Homer makes mention of the oyster.

32. Diocles the Carystian, in his treatise on the Wholesomes, says that the best of all sh.e.l.l-fish, as aperient and diuretic food, are mussels, oysters, scallops, and c.o.c.kles. And Archippus says, in his poem called "Fishes,"--

With limpets and sea-urchins and escharae, And with periwinkles and c.o.c.kles.

And Diocles says that the strongest of all sh.e.l.l-fish are c.o.c.kles, purple-fish, and ceryces. But concerning ceryces Archippus says this--

The ceryx, ocean's nursling, child of purple.

But Speusippus, in the second book of his Similarities, says that ceryces, purple-fish, strabeli, and c.o.c.kles, are all very nearly alike.

And Sophocles makes mention of the sh.e.l.l-fish called strabeli in his Camici, in these words:--

Come now, my son, and look if we may find Some of the nice strabelus, ocean's child.

And again Speusippus enumerates separately in regular order the c.o.c.kle, the periwinkle, the mussel, the pinna, the solens; and in another place he speaks of oysters and limpets. And Araros says, in his Campylion--

These now are most undoubted delicacies, c.o.c.kles and solens; and the crooked locusts Spring forth in haste like dolphins.

And Sophron says, in his Mimi--

_A._ What are these long c.o.c.kles, O my friend, Which you do think so much of?

_B._ Solens, to be sure.

This too is the sweet-flesh'd c.o.c.kle, dainty food, The dish much loved by widows.

And Cratinus also speaks of the pinna in his Archilochi--

She indeed like pinnas and sea oysters.

And Philyllius, or Eunicus, or Aristophanes, in the Cities, says--

A little polypus, or a small cuttle-fish, A crab, a crawfish, oysters, c.o.c.kles, Limpets and solens, mussels and pinnas; Periwinkles too, from Mitylene take; Let us have two sprats, and mullet, ling, And conger-eel, and perch, and black fish.

But Agiastos, and Dercylus, in his Argolici, call the strabeli ?st??????; speaking of them as suitable to play upon like a trumpet.

33. But you may find c.o.c.kles spoken of both in the masculine and feminine gender. Aristophanes says, in his Babylonians--

They all gaped on each other, and were like To c.o.c.kles (????a?) roasted on the coals.

And Teleclides, in his Hesiodi, says, "Open a c.o.c.kle (?????);" and Sophron, in his Actresses, says--

And then the c.o.c.kles (????a?) as at one command All yawned on us, and each display'd its flesh.

But aeschylus uses the word ?????? in the masculine gender, in his Glaucus Pontius, and says--

c.o.c.kles (??????), muscles, oysters.

And Aristonymus, in his Theseus, says--

There was a c.o.c.kle (????a?) and other fish too drawn from the sea At the same time, and by the same net.

And Phrynichus uses the word in the same way in his Satyrs. But Icesius, the Erasistratean, says that some c.o.c.kles are rough, and some royal; and that the rough have a disagreeable juice, and afford but little nourishment, and are easily digested; and that people who are hunting for the purple-fish use them as bait: but of the smooth ones those are best which are the largest, in exact proportion to their size. And Hegesander, in his Memorials, says that the rough c.o.c.kles are called by the Macedonians coryci, but by the Athenians crii.

34. Now Icesius says that limpets are more digestible than those sh.e.l.l-fish which have been already mentioned; but that oysters are not so nutritious as limpets, and are filling, but nevertheless are more digestible.